Australian governments and agencies were warned more than three months ago about the potential consequences of El Niño for health and healthcare, and have also been briefed more recently by the Bureau of Meteorology and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.
However, preparations to protect Australians’ health and healthcare from expected extreme weather conditions remain inadequate, reports Marie McInerney.
Marie McInerney writes:
Delays in the release of key documents and guidelines to help Australia’s health services plan for climate events are undermining the sector’s capacity to prepare for extreme weather events set to be turbo-charged by El Niño conditions.
The University of Chicago’s Climate Impact Lab this week warned the El Niño, which could be the strongest on record, could result globally in 451,000 deaths from extreme hot days, on top of the impacts from droughts, wildfires and flooding expected from hotter temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns.
Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has warned of an increased risk of drought, heatwaves, bushfires and marine heatwaves across much of Australia, persisting into autumn next year.
BOM and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water confirmed to Croakey today that they have been holding briefings across a number of government forums and agencies “to build awareness and understanding of the El Niño event”.
“There has been interest at all levels of government in understanding the local and global impacts of El Niño due to the unusual strength of the event currently being observed,” a BOM spokesperson said.
As Croakey reported back in June, health and community services were being urged then to prepare for extreme heat this summer amid warnings from the World Meteorological Organization that countries like Australia should get ready for El Niño.
However, there are major gaps in support for that preparation.
The 2023 National Health and Climate Strategy said that a National Health Adaptation Plan was expected to be published by the end of 2024. But it is yet to be made public
A more technical paper providing guidance from the Australian Centre for Disease Control on climate risk assessment and adaptation planning for Australian health system organisations is understood to have been fully drafted in January this year, but is also still to be released.
In a statement emailed to Croakey today, the Australian CDC, which is overseeing a whole-of-government effort to implement the National Health and Climate Strategy, said it would “shortly” publish guidance for Australian health organisations on climate risk assessment and adaptation planning.
Climate and Health Alliance (CAHA) CEO Michelle Isles told Croakey the health sector urgently needs the national plan for health adaptation and the CDC guidance so hospitals, aged care providers, state health departments, local health networks, Aboriginal community-controlled organisations and others can progress planning, training workforces, and organising budgets.
“We need the Australian Government to release their plan and publish the guidance,” she said. “Helping health systems to understand risks and how to coordinate responses is critical.”
Isles said health organisations also need dedicated funding allocated in the next Australian Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO), expected in December 2026 or by January 2027, so they can coordinate responses to the climate change shocks and stresses “coming our way”.
Isles met this week with Assistant Health Minister Rebecca White, and has called on her to “please release [the documents] and also advocate for budget allocation through MYEFO for implementation”.
Minister White’s office did not respond to Croakey’s questions about the plan for health adaptation or the CDC’s technical guidance.
System unprepared
A prominent emergency medicine specialist, Dr Simon Judkins, who works in regional Victoria, said the Australian health system was not prepared.
“Our EDs and hospitals are already working over capacity,” he told Croakey. “There has been very little coordination from a government, health department level in preparation and education.
“The smart thing to do would be to look at what has happened in Europe, with thousands of excess deaths, and use that data to assist in planning. But that hasn’t been done.
“Education of public, communities, vulnerable populations would be useful, helpful. We are going into what, from all indications, will be a summer of extremes, with no plans on how this will be managed.”
Isles welcomed comments from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in New York this week, including a speech to the United Nations that identified climate change and AI as key global challenges. But she said: “He’s not talking about it here.”
Australian social research consistently shows that most Australians care about climate change, she said, but they don’t think their neighbour does.
“We need leadership from the Prime Minister to be talking about the health impacts and drivers of climate change as a key domestic issue as well as a global issue,” she said.
As Croakey reported this week, experts are calling on governments and health organisations to lift their game in climate health communications following research showing that many Australians do not appreciate the risks of climate change to their health and to healthcare systems.
Health organisations, including the Royal Australian College of GPs, have been calling for some time for the National Health and Climate Strategy to be fully funded.
Briefings and silences
BOM has been briefing government agencies on season outlooks, the long-range forecast and El Niño, as well as on longer term trends based on data presented in the Australian Climate Service’s National Climate Risk Assessment, its spokesperson said.
Key to these briefings has been the advice that the strength of an individual El Niño event does not dictate the strength of impacts for the Australian region, they said.
BOM CEO Dr Stuart Minchin and Senior Climatologist Felicity Gamble spoke at the National Preparedness Summit hosted by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) in Canberra on 9 and 10 September ahead of what NEMA calls “the 2026–27 Higher Risk Weather Season”.
The spokesperson said their key messages included:
- A very strong El Niño event is underway and is likely to influence weather and climate patterns across Australia and the broader Indo-Pacific region in the months ahead.
- This event is occurring in a warmer climate than previous El Niño events, contributing to record global ocean temperatures and increasing the potential for significant impacts.
- Parts of eastern and southern Australia are forecast to have below average rainfall this spring, while parts of western and northern Australia are forecast to have above average rainfall.
- Temperatures are very likely to be warmer than average, with increased chances of being ‘unusually warm’ across Australia, particularly south of the tropics during spring and into summer.
- There is an increased bushfire risk this spring for parts of Australia.
- Marine heatwaves are possible across much of the Australian region – with El Niño typically increasing the risk of coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef.
Isles welcomed the BOM briefings of government departments, but said this begged the question: “is there enough time to plan and respond?”
Governments can respond to emergencies, “but we need to be working in emergency mode and that means they need to work across and with the health ecosystem”, she said.
That includes with non-government organisations like CAHA, which have networks to reach groups and programs “that are poised to act, but are needing more advice and more resourcing to do so”, she said.
A spokesperson for the CDC said the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing had represented the health portfolio – including the CDC – at the National Preparedness Summit.
Insights from this event will be shared at an internal stakeholder briefing on 6 October for staff focused on addressing the impact of extreme heat on health in particular, they said.
The Department’s National Incident Centre (NIC), which coordinates the national response to health emergencies such as Hantavirus and Tropical Cyclone Alfred, would be involved in the briefing.
While there is “no current NIC activation on heat, El Niño or climate change, the situation is being actively monitored,” the spokesperson said.
At an event in New York, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese highlighted that climate change is the most immediate threat for the Pacific, with impacts that are real, and for some nations, “existential”.
That is why Australia is supporting Fiji and Tuvalu to host next month’s Pre-COP Leaders’ event, in the lead up to COP31, he said.
Yet in nearly 16,000 words of transcripts from his addresses, speeches, and interviews in New York this week, including one focused on the Pacific, not once did the term ‘fossil fuels’ appear.
While the United Nations chief continues pushing for urgent phase out of fossil fuels, the Albanese Government has approved 37 new, expanded or extended fossil fuel projects since coming to power, with 42 more in the pipeline for approval.
Meanwhile, the Federal Coalition was accused of plans to “let climate change rip” when it released its energy policy this week, vowing to take “a chain saw” to climate laws and offshore wind zones.
Leaders summit
CAHA is hosting a Climate Leaders Summit on 13 October, bringing together CEOs of 50 health organisations from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, along with Pacific health leaders.
“We will not only be talking about climate safety in the Australian context, but with the urgency and salience of the Pacific message, in the context of COP, where the impacts are known, they’re real, and the world needs to see them and act on them,” Isles said.
The Australian Government needs to do “more heavy lifting for our own preparedness, but also in relation to and in support of our neighbours”, she said.
Extreme heat is recognised as one of the deadliest natural forces in Australia, and currently leads to more deaths and hospital admissions annually than any other hazard in Australia.
As Croakey’s Jason Staines wrote in June, extreme heat is no longer an unforeseeable emergency: “The challenge is whether institutions act on those warnings before temperatures spike.”
For health services, that preparation can include reviewing heatwave response plans, identifying vulnerable patients who may require additional support during periods of extreme heat, and ensuring hospitals, ambulance services and aged-care facilities are prepared for increased demand, as well as the direct impact upon health and aged care workforces and infrastructure.
Further BOM information on El Niño:
See Croakey’s archive of articles on heatwaves
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